1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to managing electronic mail (email). Further, the present invention relates to managing a response to an email by a hidden email recipient, wherein the receipt of the email by the hidden email recipient is blocked from at least one other recipient of the email.
2. Description of the Related Art
To send an electronic communication, such as electronic mail (email), a sender typically composes the email message and addresses that message to one or more recipients. In addressing an email message, an email composition application may provide a sender with an option to select to send the email to some recipients as direct recipients, some recipients as a carbon copy (CC), and to other recipients as a blind carbon copy (BCC). In handling distribution of an email, an email service sends a copy of the email to all the addressees, but does not disclose the BCC recipient's address in the copy of the email received by any other recipients of the same email. In another example, an email composition application or email service may not offer a BCC option, but may provide other options for a sender to request to “hide” one or more recipients of the email by blocking other recipients from seeing that the email was sent to the hidden recipients. For example, a sender may place those addresses that are to be hidden within a set of parenthesis.
There are many reasons that a sender may wish to use an option to hide one or more recipients of the email from the other recipients of the same email when addressing an email message. For example, as a courtesy to recipients, a sender may use an option for hiding recipients to an email to protect the security of the email address of each recipient. In another example, a sender may use an option for hiding email recipient addressing so that hidden recipients may anonymously monitor the email. For example, a sender may want to add a boss or an administrator as an addressee of an email communication, to allow monitoring of the email communication, without disclosing that the email is being monitored.
A limitation of email services that provide an option to hide one or more recipients of an email is that the copy of the email received by the hidden recipient does not alert the recipient to this hidden status. In addition, another limitation of email services that provide an option to hide one or more recipients of an email is that when the hidden recipient selects to respond to that email to anyone other than the sender, such as selecting to reply all, the hidden recipient is not alerted that the hidden recipient has selected a response that will reveal the identity of the hidden recipient to recipients who previously did not know that the hidden recipient received the email.
Therefore, in view of the foregoing, it is apparent that there is a need for a method, system, and program for managing a response to an email by a hidden recipient, by alerting the hidden recipient when the recipient has requested a response that will disclose the hidden recipient and/or blocking the hidden recipient from selecting particular response options that would disclose hidden recipient.